


I'm A Little Screwy Myself

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe--Historical, Banter, F/M, Hate to Love, It Happened One Night AU, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-04-28 05:12:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5079184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When reporter Jemma Simmons meets Leo Fitz, heir on the run after his uncle refuses to let him marry noted socialite Raina, she strikes a deal: she'll help him get to New York, and his fiance, if he gives her an exclusive on his story.  That is, if they don't kill each other out of irritation first. (An It Happened One Night AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Another Opening, Another Show

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fitzsimmonsy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitzsimmonsy/gifts).



> Happy belated birthday to the lovely fitzsimmonsy, one of the most wonderful people in the Fitzsimmons fandom!!!! I very much hope that you like this and promise that it will be done as soon as possible!

At the moment, there were probably hundreds of ambitious young men who would have liked to be in Leo Fitz's handcrafted Italian leather shoes, planted as they were on a luxury yacht moored off Miami. Fitz was not one of them.

“I already told you why I want to marry her,” he snapped. “I'm in love with her.”

“You think you're in love with her. There's quite a difference,” Harold Vincent Andrews, the chairman of Andrews Industries, titan of the business world, and unfortunately enough, Fitz's uncle , boomed from over his newspaper. “You're just not used to having money yet, Leopold. It attracts a certain kind of people, with a nose for anyone with money who doesn't know how to spend it. Trust me, this girl would be more than happy to spend it for you.”

“Raina's not like that,” Fitz said hotly. “She'd love me if I didn't have a penny to my name.”

“She didn't even _know_ you when you didn't have a penny to your name,” his uncle said and raised the newspaper even higher, signaling that the conversation was effectively over. “You'll find a million more pretty girls who want you to buy them jewelry, Leopold, and probably ones who have much better taste in it. Believe me, she'll have forgotten all about you by the time I let you off this boat.”

Fitz contemplated hurling the plate of Eggs Benedict sitting in front of him straight at his uncle's monogrammed silk tie and thought better of it. If he was going to escape over the side in one of the motorboats he'd rigged to run without gas, he'd need to eat to keep his strength up.

 

“Yes, I got the story. All ten boring inches of it,” Jemma sighed into the phone. “Blushing bride, handsome groom, horribly jealous jilted woman leaping up and trying to disrupt the ceremony halfway through...I could write this kind of story in my sleep. I have written this kind of story in my sleep.”

“You're my best society reporter, Jemma,” Bobbi said firmly, her voice crackling over the line. “No one knows how to spin a story like you.”

“Then give me something real to spin!”

“I'm trying, I promise. It's just a tough sell to the board—girl reporter writes hard-hitting expose of Hoovervilles across the nation? It was a great story,” Bobbi said. “Just not the kind that sells papers. People want to forget about their troubles, not see it staring up at them in thirty-two point font.”

“What if I find you another society story? Clark Gable and Loretta Young's love child good. Scandal of the year good. Then will you let me write a real story?” Jemma asked. There was a long pause on the other end of the line and then Bobbi sighed heavily. 

“All right, Jemma. Show me—show all of those hidebound old men on the board—what you can do and I'll give you a dedicated space on the front page. 64 point type, full-page photo, and everything.”

“You won't regret this, Bobbi,” Jemma breathed. “I promise.” She would have said more but the operator informed her that it would cost her ten cents more to extend the call and so instead she set the receiver down with a decisive thump. It couldn't be too hard to find a good story, she reasoned. Miami was swarming with high society types fleeing the slush and grit of a New York spring, wrapped in fur, dripping with jewels, and doing all the things they'd regret in the morning. Just the other day, she'd read about some spoiled society prince who'd thrown a fit and commandeered a motorboat off his uncle's yacht because his uncle wouldn't let him marry his latest dish. Now the uncle had half the private detective agencies on the Eastern Sideboard out looking for him, combing the roads, the airfields, the train stations, the coastline, and probably the boot of every car from here to Boston. Jemma would have felt sorry for him, if it hadn't been for the fact that his sweetheart was one of the society set's most notorious gold diggers. She'd take him for all the furs and diamonds she could get and leave him flat faster than you could say boo. 

It'd probably be good for him to marry her after all, sharpen him up a bit. If he shelled out the dough for a divorce lawyer, he'd even be able to get off easy. That was assuming he'd make it to New York at all. Jemma'd even spotted a man or two patrolling the station, all in fedoras and sharp pinstriped suits and skulking about in a way that meant either private detective or mobster. (Not greasy enough to be a mobster, though. She'd gone undercover in Chicago once, back during Prohibition, to get straight to the root of a gin smuggling ring and she'd had enough of sharkskin shoes and hackneyed lines for a lifetime. Then Gonzales, who had been the editor back then, had turned her story into a puff piece on the pearl necklaces on the flapper girls who frequented one of the mob's clubs.) He wouldn't get five miles out of Miami.

Well then. Jemma sighed and picked up her battered suitcase with one hand, clutching an overnight bus ticket in the other. Time to head back up to New York and find a society darling or three who'd be willing to spill their secrets for the price of a drink and a listening ear. Maybe if she got lucky, she'd find another love rhombus or two. Her prospects on the bus, however, looked distinctly dismal.

It was filled with men who were just the wrong side of middle-aged and who glanced a bit too long at her neatly tailored suit, elderly women who knitted with an aggression that suggested a long-standing grudge against the world or a past as a spy, and loud, large families who took up as much space as possible and filled the air with the scent of corned beef sandwiches. Jemma headed all the way to the back, where she thought she'd spotted an open seat, only to find it occupied by a man with unruly scruff and a hand-stitched suit. He was slouched down as far as possible but still managed to sprawl out across the seat, legs extended in a perfect parallel to the leather bench seat.

“Excuse me,” Jemma said sweetly. “But this seat is meant for two.”

“No, it's not,” he mumbled.

“Actually, I think you'll find it is.” Jemma perched on the edge of the seat, sliding over until she was practically sitting in his lap. He finally straightened up, with a bright blush and a distinct lack of an apology, and glared over at her from underneath his hat with a pair of strangely familiar blue eyes. She knew she'd seen those somewhere before...And, all at once, it hit her. This was Leo Fitz, rebellious heir and subject of the biggest manhunt since John Wilkes Booth.

And her ticket to the story of a lifetime.


	2. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Much to her displeasure, Jemma realized that if she wanted the story of a lifetime, she'd have to be nice to him in order to get it. So she tried her best, edging back over to her side of the seat so he'd have the proper amount of room and glancing over at him with her attempt at wide, innocent eyes. She even offered him half of her sandwich. He just grumbled at her, balled up his jacket under his head, and promptly went to sleep. Right on her shoulder.

He wasn't too heavy, so Jemma supposed she couldn't complain. It wasn't at all the usual way of doing things, men falling asleep on her shoulder, particularly when they had a nicely shaped space between shoulder and neck that appeared to be Jemma-shaped and that she'd already been plotting to occupy. But then, if Jemma Simmons had been interested in the usual thing, she would have stayed at home and resigned herself to a life of croquet and cucumber sandwiches.

When Fitz woke up, he jerked himself off her shoulder so fast that he nearly got whiplash. “You could have moved me, you know,” he mumbled, the tips of his ears turning rosy pink. “I'm like a cat—I can sleep anywhere.”

“I tried to move you at first, but you just made a noise like a broken radiator and moved right back on to my shoulder,” Jemma said, mostly to make him blush. It hadn't quite been a broken radiator, more like the hiss of an unhappy kitten. However, in her experience, grown men didn't take well to being compared to kittens. (The mobsters certainly hadn't.) Fitz just huffed in response and shifted over to his side of the bench seat until his face was pressed against the window, one side squished adorably out of shape. 

When the bus pulled into its first stop, Fitz leaped off the seat so fast that he nearly tripped over her. “I'm going to get a sandwich and make a phone call,” he snapped. “Don't let the bus leave without me.”

“Buses don't just wait for people!” Jemma called after him. No matter how little you wanted to be on them. She'd seen him eying the seats' peeling leather and the sandwich wrappers scattering the floor with horror before he'd groaned and shoved his hat over his eyes. She supposed that the little princeling had never spent a day on anything that wasn't chauffered, upholstered, or both. After all, she'd seen photos of that yacht in the papers, when she'd been forced to write a puff piece about its new decorating scheme. It was quite a fall from an in-house bar to a roadside stand selling hot dogs. Quite good hot dogs, though. Nice and greasy.

Three minutes before the bus was due to leave, Fitz still wasn't back and Jemma had the sinking feeling that he really thought buses waited for him. And if he got left behind, her story left right along with them. Nothing for it—she'd just have to distract the bus driver until he got right back. Jemma sighed, hitched her skirt an inch higher, made her way to the front of the bus, and began telling a remarkably involved joke about a priest, a lawyer, and a talking squirrel who all walked into a bar. She managed to stall just long enough for Fitz to leap onto the bus, march his way to the back, and immediately cause a ruckus because his suitcase had disappeared.

“Half a hour ago, it was right above my seat and now it's completely gone,” he announced, casting a suspicious glance over each and every person on the bus, from the elderly woman clutching her knitting right down to the baby cheerfully waving a half-eaten biscuit at him. “Vanished right into thin air.”

“If you don't keep an eye on things around here, they walk away,” Jemma informed him. “Just grow a little pair of legs and toddle off all on their own. _Idiot._ People were desperate these days and a suitcase made of hand-tooled leather would fetch a nice price even without whatever was inside. It didn't have to be someone on the bus: anyone could have walked on, snatched up the case, and walked off, cool as you please. “Keep a better eye on it next time.”

“Well, where I'm from they don't! Someone stole my suitcase and I demand immediate compensation,” Fitz huffed, raising his voice so the whole bus could hear him. “I'd like to search all the luggage racks on this bus, using a device that I've developed. My suitcase is tagged with a tracker, so if whoever stole it comes forward and gives it up now, I'll consider not pressing charges.”

“Like hell, you're searching my bus,” the driver said. “You left it, you lost it.”

“I did not leave it!” Fitz said hotly. “I locked it to the bar and assumed that no one would be enough of a bloody idiot to try picking the lock just to get at my socks.”

“Look, either shut your kisser, mister, or get off my bus.” The driver rose to his full height, crossing both arms across his chest and glaring down at Fitz. Fitz tried to glare back but considering that his glare fell somewhere in the middle of the driver's chest, he looked like he'd been cast as the short half of a comedy duo. To no one's surprise, he got off the bus faster than if he was being chased by a bill collector. To everyone's surprise, Jemma went after him.

“What are you doing? You could have gotten the whole seat to yourself.” Fitz glared at her suspiciously. “You don't even like me.”

“You've got that one right.” Despite the fact that there was something about his stubbornness, about his hell-bound determination to navigate a country he clearly knew nothing about, that reminded her uncomfortably of herself.“But I do like your story.”

“My story? Don't have one.” He shoved both hands into his pockets, still glaring at her.

“Right. Just like President Roosevelt doesn't have a New Deal. I'm a reporter,” Jemma said. “And your picture's been all over the papers for the last two days. Heir on the Run—For Love!”

“Are you going to turn me in for the reward?”

“That's door number two. But I'd much prefer to take door number one. Look, here are the facts: I need a story. You need my help.” Though she wouldn't balk at the forty thousand dollar reward either.

“I don't need your help,” he protested.

“When’s the last time you saw this country from something other than a limousine?” Jemma asked, hands propped on her hips. “And those private airplanes of yours don’t count.”

“I grew up on the streets of Glasgow!” Fitz said defensively.

>

“The streets of Glasgow have nothing on the back roads of Georgia. Look,” Jemma said and hoped that she sounded more confident than she felt.“I’m offering you a deal here. I’ll get you to New York, safe and sound and reunited with your precious lady love, if you give me an exclusive on the story. Half the girls in the country will be swooning whenever they hear your name by the time I’m done.”

“You’re that good a reporter?” Fitz arched a quizzical eyebrow at her.

“I’m even better. Besides,” Jemma added. “Look around. How else are you going to get there? Without me, you're stuck on a dusty road in the middle of Georgia, with nothing but peach farms and trigger-happy Southerners all around you.”

“And with you?”

“Well, then we'll be stuck on a dusty road in the middle of Georgia together. But with at least three more ways of hitching a lift out of here than we would have had on our own. So,” Jemma said and stuck out her hand to him. “Do we have a deal?”

“We do,” he said grudgingly and shook it.

“Right then. Leopold Fitz, industry heir, thwarted lover...let's see if we can do something about that hair and get a nice girl to pick you up.”


	3. Friendship

Half an hour later, Jemma was seriously contemplating telling Fitz to fake an injury and hope that someone sympathetic would drive by. Or just injuring him herself. Leopold Fitz was quite possibly the least enthusiastic hitchhiker she'd ever encountered. “Try and put a little more energy into your thumb,” she snapped. “Look like you actually want to get somewhere.”

“I do,” Fitz grumbled. “Especially if it means getting back to Raina and away from you.” Jemma decided to ignore the second half of his sentence: it often took people a while to warm up to her under the best of circumstances.

“What's so special about this girl, anyway?” Jemma asked. “Must be quite a dame, if you're trying to get all the way to New York on your own for her.” 

“She's...I can't really describe it, but there's something about her. You just can't take your eyes off her and she...people don't really listen to me much. Not yet anyway. But they're going to, as soon as I stop blowing things up,” he added. “But she has this way of listening like everything I say matters to her. And she always wants to hear more about what I'm working on—she listened for a whole hour once and didn't even ask me a single question about it the whole time. When I ask her about it later, she just looks up at me—she's got the most beautiful eyes, really—and she smiles like she understands it all perfectly.” 

Understands that you're a sucker for a pretty pair of eyes, Jemma thought to herself. But she kept her mouth shut and despite herself, she couldn't help feeling a twinge of sympathy for Fitz. She'd read his story in the papers, how he'd grown up in Scotland until his uncle had plucked him from his life at the age of seventeen and promptly started grooming him to take over Andrews Industries. He probably hadn't known anyone when he'd first gotten State-side and considering his miraculous ability to antagonize people, Jemma was willing to bet that he hadn't had much success in finding friends afterward. A pretty girl who was willing to listen when no one else would...someone like that could have Fitz wrapped around her little finger by teatime. 

“I think I might know what that's like,” Jemma said quietly. “When I was starting out as a reporter, it was near impossible to get anyone to listen to my story ideas. Still is, some days.”  
“People think that just because you're young, just because things have never been done that way before--”

“That they can never be done that way. They don't like change, but it's going to catch up to them eventually.”

“Exactly.” Fitz shot a small, shy smile over at her and just for a moment, Jemma felt like they'd reached a tentative understanding. Maybe they both knew what it felt like to be told no ten times too many, to have a head full of questions and a world ready to explore and someone standing in the way. And just for a moment, standing there on the side of a dusty Georgia road in the summer sun, neither of them said anything to provoke the other. But then another car zipped past as Fitz lazily spun the world's limpest thumb in a circle and Jemma decided that, no matter how many people hadn't listened to him, Fitz clearly hadn't spent enough time listening to other people.

“I'm not asking you to jump up and down waving your arms at any car that passes by or do anything that offends your high society dignity.” She rolled her eyes up as high as they could go and cut Fitz off as he opened his mouth, before he could mention the streets of Glasgow or his lack of dignity again. (At least he'd gotten the lack of dignity bit right.) “I'm just saying that you could maybe smile a little. Look like you're not about to bite someone's head off.”

“I'm hungry,” he mumbled.

“Tough luck. Unless we get someone to pick us up, we'll be stuck eating fruit off those trees and hoping the farmer doesn't have a shotgun. Clearly, it's time for desperate measures,” Jemma said with a sigh. His thumb obviously wasn't going to be much help here. It was time for the limb. She stepped onto the shoulder of the road, bent down and began to unroll one of her stockings.

“What—what are you doing?” Fitz sputtered. A flush was slowly spreading up his neck, all the way across his face and to the tips of his ears. She hadn't known that eyelids could blush too.

“Getting someone to pick us up, the best way that I know how.” She unrolled the stocking an inch further, bent down a little more and there! Tires screeched on the road and Jemma heard the unmistakable sound of a car stopping. She straightened back up, turned to face whatever not-so-kind soul had spotted her legs, and was pleasantly surprised. There was a young couple sitting in the front seat of a car, both of them looking very concerned.

“Are you all right, honey?” the girl asked in a syrup-sweet Southern accent. “Not many people pass through these parts, especially not on their own.”

“Oh, I'm not alone,” Jemma said brightly. “I've got my husband with me.” Somewhere behind her (probably skulking in a bush) Fitz made a strange noise. She ignored it and went on. “We just got married this morning and now we're headed up to New York. He's got a job there, only our car broke down fifteen minutes out of Florida and my family, well, my father doesn't exactly approve of Leo.”

“Forbidden love,” the girl breathed. “Isn't that exciting, Jackson?” Beside her, Jackson gave them an enthusiastic nod.

“My father wanted me to marry a rich man, but the moment that I saw Leo, I knew he was the only man for me. I didn't care that he was penniless, or grumpy, or even that he was Scottish...he just looked at me with those blue eyes and I knew that we were meant to be. Isn't that right, darling?” Jemma thought that she was probably laying it on a little thick but she'd never been able to do anything by halves.

“Absolutely right,” Fitz said with a strained smile. “True love, just like that.”

“That's so romantic,” the boy said gruffly and wiped a single tear away. “Can we offer you a ride anywhere?”

“Well, if you could take us to the train station, that'd be just marvelous.” Jemma beamed up at them and when they swung the back door of the car open, she took Fitz's hand in hers and clutched it so tightly that he couldn't pull away. He was hissing something under his breath at her as they climbed up, probably laced with a creative swear or two, but Jemma just ignored it and cuddled up close to him as soon as they were seated in the back. She'd been right: the space between his shoulder and neck was precisely Jemma-shaped.

“What are you doing?” Fitz whispered fiercely. Jemma stepped on his foot to make him shut up and then planted a loud kiss on his cheek when he yelped in pain. 

“I'm getting us a ride,” Jemma whispered before she pulled away. “So just keep your arm around me and your mouth shut and don't ruin it all.” Fitz looped an arm around her shoulders with a heavy sigh and forced his mouth into a smile as he stared down at her. From a distance, it probably looked affectionate. Well, he could take all of his complaints and shove them wherever his suitcase had gone. People were more likely to pick up a sweet young couple than a pair of bickering near-strangers glaring daggers at each other, especially if you threw in a soppy story or two. Jemma knew what sold, on the page and off it.

“So what did you think when you first met her, Leo?” the girl asked, twisting her neck around to peer back over the seat and beam at them. “It was love at first sight for you too, wasn't it?”

“I, ah...you could say that. I thought that she was beautiful when I first saw her, of course,” Fitz said slowly. “But I didn't really like her until I saw how clever and determined she was. When Jemma wants something, she just goes right after it, whatever the consequences. She's going to change the world someday.” And when Fitz smiled down at her, it almost didn't look like he had to contort his mouth into an unnatural shape to do it.

“You did quite well,” Jemma told him later, after the couple had dropped them off at the train station with a basket of homemade biscuits and a rousing round of good luck wishes. “Your improvisational skills aren't as abysmal as I thought they'd be.”

“I'm touched,” Fitz said. He stayed silent for the rest of the time that they were waiting for the train, fiddling with some small device as he sat on the single splintery bench in the station, and Jemma thought that perhaps this was their version of a truce. The truce shattered into smithereens, however, when they got to their train compartment and saw the single bunk there. “I'm not sharing a bed with you,” Fitz declared, crossing his arms across his chest and setting both their suitcases down with a significant thump.

“How flattering. Don't worry,” Jemma said dryly. “Your virtue will be safe with me.”

“It's not that—I just...It wouldn't be right. I can stay outside in the corridor, or find a chair somewhere in the club car...”

“And how are they supposed to believe that we're a married couple if we're not even sharing a bed?” Jemma asked crisply. They'd pretended to be married when they bought the tickets too, after the ticket agent had started giving them odd looks and muttering about modern morals under his breath. “Look, it's a large bed. You stick on your side and I'll stick to mine. And if you try to steal any of my blankets I'll just steal them right back.”

“But you...I...we...” Fitz sputtered.

“All pronouns, yes. Don't worry—I've shared a bed with people who take up far more room than you do.” Jemma half said it because it was true and half to make him blush. 

As it turned out, Fitz didn't steal the blankets. Or try to yank the pillows out from under her, or kick, or snore, or do anything of the other unsatisfactory things that Jemma had been sure he'd do just to spite her. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and held on tight.


	4. Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered

When they woke up in the morning, curled snugly around each other, they both resolved to never mention the incident again. Despite how warm he had been, and the way his arm had fit exactly around her waist, and how utterly, completely comfortable he'd made her feel. Jemma Simmons had never been someone who slept easy, even when she'd known where she would be sleeping each night. She'd been the kind of child who jerked awake in the middle of the night, calling loudly for anyone who would come and convinced that she had to get out of bed to take samples of the monsters hiding under her bed. If her father was at home, he'd come and take her outside to see the constellations but if he was away on business, she'd lie there awake and stare up at the ceiling until her eyes got tired of counting the cracks. And later, after she'd stormed out of her parents' house and the doors had shut for good behind her, she'd gotten used to sleeping with one eye open. People would rob you blind if you weren't careful, whether you were sleeping in a haystack or in a hotel on the wrong side of the tracks. Even at home in New York, in the perfectly respectable women's club she stayed in when she wasn't out on assignment, Jemma found herself waking up at the slightest noise from next door. But now, rattling over a set of tracks badly in need of repair, in a mattress with more lumps in it than not, next to a spoiled heir with a list of complaints longer than his nose, she slept better than she ever had.

It was a puzzle, Jemma thought, just how not awful it had been. Luckily, she'd never met a puzzle that she couldn't solve. So, as she buttoned up her blouse and futilely attempted to smooth down her hair and redo her makeup in the tiny mirror, she watched Fitz. He was trying so hard not to look at her that he actually ended up looking at her, every so often, and turning pink again. It was a natural response, after all: that was probably the closest he'd ever been to a woman who wasn't his mother. Clever women like Raina waited to seal the deal until they had a diamond as big as the Ritz on their left hand.

She watched Fitz over breakfast too, as he devoured two plates worth of eggs, bacon, and potatoes as she munched delicately on her tea and toast. He had terrible table manners for someone who'd spent the past seven years in high society but she found it oddly endearing. She'd never met anyone before who worried about the correct proportion of egg to bacon to potato in each bite. She could sympathize. There was a proper tea-to-toast ratio too and she'd already opened her mouth to tell him exactly how she'd come up with it when she remembered that friendly breakfast chat didn't have much of a place in their business arrangement. “Tell me about how you met Raina,” she said abruptly and pulled a notebook and pencil out of her purse.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Fitz asked suspiciously. “Don't say her name too loud—someone on the train might have heard the story.”

“It's for the story, of course. If I'm going to turn the two of you into America's hottest couple since Scott and Zelda, I'll need some more details. Scott and Zelda without the bathtubs of gin or the severe marital problems, of course,” Jemma added, pencil poised over paper. “Though if you turn all this into a best-selling novel afterward, I'd be happy to write for you.”

“You want to write books too?”

“Well, I've never tried it, but I imagine it can't be that difficult.” Jemma shot him a brilliant smile and leaned forward confidingly. “Now, if you just give me a few pertinent details about the night you met—the dress she was wearing, the song that was playing, the moonlight shining over the water, some rot like that.”

“I, ah, I'm not actually sure I remember. It probably had flowers on it?” Fitz offered. 

“All right. I can work with flowers. Now, the song? It doesn't have to be a song,” she said when Fitz just looked at her blankly. “Just some charming little detail. People eat that stuff up with a spoon.”

“I, ah, I'm not very good at remembering things like that. I can't even remember what her favorite flower is half the time: I accidentally sent her lilies once and she didn't speak to me for a day and a half.” Fitz shuddered.

“I'm sure you remember more than you think you do,” Jemma said, trying to keep her voice calm and encouraging. “Tell me...tell me what book I was reading on the bus yesterday.”

“ _The Sun Also Rises._ Hemingway,” he said, almost automatically. “But I only remember that because you were being so insufferable about reading it. You turn pages very loudly.”

“Hardly,” Jemma sniffed. “But see? If you can remember that, you can certainly remember something about the night you met the woman you were later to jump off a yacht for.”

“It wasn't a jump,” Fitz mumbled. “More like a calculated leap. Look, I already told you that I'm no good with romance: there was just something about Raina that made me think I was. That made me the kind of person who'd jump off a yacht. Into another boat, though. It wasn't like I was about to swim to--”

“That's it!” Jemma interrupted, pointing her pencil straight at him. “That's the angle we want. Everyone likes a good transformation story—beauty taming the beast, sweet girl brings shy boy out of his shell, doesn't matter whether or not she's really sweet. I told you that I was good at this.” Her pencil was already flying across the page, sketching out sentences and framing quotes. _Right now, Dear Reader, I'm sitting across from the most in love young man on the whole East Coast. Romeo's got nothing on Leo Fitz._ It's not the best first line she's ever written, but that's Bobbi (and her editing skills) are for. Jemma could almost feel the story itching at the tips of her fingers, yearning to spill out on the page, and she promised herself that this would be it. The last—and the best--society story that she'd ever write.

“What's in it for you?” he asked suddenly. “If you get this story?”

“Bragging rights,” Jemma shrugged. “And maybe the paper will let me work on something real for once. They don't like listening to me much, especially after that piece I did on the city mayor and his mistress. Gonzales—my old boss—sent three whole bouquets of roses and a box of cannoli over to his wife to apologize.”

“Well, it sounds like they're going to have to. You're a good reporter, Jemma. A really good one. You'd...you'd do anything to get a story, wouldn't you? I mean, you're eating breakfast with me right now, stuck on a slow train going through the whole Atlantic Seaboard one piece of seaboard at a time, just for a story. Right?”

“Anything within the range of journalistic ethics,” Jemma said crisply. “Now tell me about some of the advances you want to make in your uncle's company. New technologies you've come up with, as long as their names have at least three syllables in them.”

“What does that have to do with the story?”

“I'm trying to make you look clever. You can thank me later.” Jemma suspected that it'd be much easier to make him sound good than most of her other profile subjects. The kind of people she tended to interview thought that they were much cleverer than they really were, while Fitz probably didn't even know the full extent of his cleverness himself. When she'd glanced down at the remains of their breakfast, she'd seen the sculpture he'd built out of napkins and leftover silverware.

“I...are you sure that people would really find that interesting? Or be able to follow along with it? I mean,” he said and added another spoon to the structure so he could avoid her eyes. “Most people can't. Not that it's their fault, of course. My mind, it just...things usually sound better in my head than they do out of it.”

“Well, I'm not most people,” Jemma arched an eyebrow at him and took another sip of her tea. “Try me.”

Nearly an hour later, Jemma was very sure of two things. One, Leo Fitz was one of the most brilliant people she'd ever met. Two, she was still smarter than him. He had a million ideas bouncing around in his head—new equipment designs, new production methods, new inventions that were so different Jemma had to shut her eyes for a moment and shift her mind half a degree to the right just to imagine them. But she could imagine them and from the way Fitz's eyes went wide whenever she leaned forward and asked him another scientific question, she supposed that many people hadn't been able to. They traded ideas back and forth like they were passing a drink between them and neither one wanted to be the one to finish it, drawing each detail out until they'd looked at it from every side they could both see and some they couldn't. Jemma told herself that it was for the sake of the story but the truth was that she liked talking to Fitz more than she'd ever imagined she could.

He was still wrong, of course. Quite frequently and about lots of things. He just needed to have someone tell him exactly how and why he was wrong. Someone quite like ace reporter Jemma Simmons. “I'll have every girl in America swooning over you,” she told him smugly, after she'd filled up a good third of her notebook with their interview. “Despite your best efforts.”

“I wish you'd stop saying that,” Fitz muttered. “I don't want anyone swooning over me.”

“Not even Raina? Seems to me like you did quite a lot to keep her swooning over you. And evidently, it worked,” Jemma added quickly. Advising Fitz on who to marry wasn't in her job description. “You two sound like quite the lovely couple.”

“Yeah, I...I guess we are. Are we getting off at Grand Central?” he asked. “We've still got a ways to go, but I wanted to make sure we didn't miss our stop. Not that you could really miss Grand Central, but I--”

“Of course we're not getting off at Grand Central. We're getting off in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania and driving the rest of the way. Your uncle'll have agents all throughout the station,” she explained when he shot a puzzled look at her. “They'd snatch you quicker than you can say 'But I love her.' and then you'd be back in Miami and I'd be out of a story.”

“Does the middle of nowhere have a real name?”

“Does it need one?” Jemma retorted. Fitz just sighed in response, stood up, and shuffled off back to their compartment, grabbing one of her pieces of toast for the long and arduous journey back. Fine then. If he was going to sulk for no reason whatsoever, she'd make use of the time to write her story. She thought that “Love Triumphs” had a nice ring to it.

Jemma was halfway through detailing a moonlit Miami night when one of the porters plopped a newspaper right down in front of her nose and her story got even better. _Come Home Fitz_ , a headline blared in 64-point type at her. _Uncle Ends Manhunt, Agrees to Marriage with Noted Socialite Raina Flowers._ She could have written a better headline any day, but she could be offended on behalf of journalism later. Fitz's story had just gotten even better and she'd be the only reporter to have his side of it all. Maybe, if she got really lucky, she could even interview Raina too, before the wedding. Never mind the fact that the thought of covering Fitz's wedding made her feel suddenly queasy. 

“Fitz!” she hissed through the door of their compartment. “Fitz, let me in. You've got to see this.” She'd marched back to their compartment as soon as she'd put the rest of the bill for breakfast on Fitz's company account. (He'd eaten most of it anyway.) The door flew open, a hand shot out, and Jemma found herself unceremoniously pulled inside and uncomfortably close to Leo Fitz as her back hit the now closed door of their compartment and her gaze met his.

“I already saw it,” he whispered. “Don't talk so loudly.”

“Why not? Aren't you happy?” The fact that he'd be an idiot if he wasn't went unsaid.

“Of course I am.” He rubbed anxiously at the back of his neck with his free hand. Fitz hadn't seemed to realize that he was still holding on to her hand but she didn't feel inclined to tell him. “I'm just not sure if I—I don't know—I've just gotten everything that I wanted and I've been wondering why I wanted it in the first place. I probably seem ridiculous, don't I?”

“No more than usual.” Jemma shrugged and tried to ignore the fact that his eyes seemed to have decided to get even bluer in the last half hour. She'd have to come up with a new adjective for them now. How inconvenient.   
“You're...you're the most impossible person I've ever met,” Fitz breathed. 

And that was when he kissed her.


	5. They Can't Take That Away from Me

After seven years in the newspaper business, Jemma Simmons liked to think that there wasn't much that could surprise her. Turned out, the fact that Leo Fitz knew how to kiss did. 

It wasn't that she'd thought he didn't know how to kiss at all. There'd probably been plenty of girls ready and willing to kiss him. But Fitz was a nice boy and she'd been fairly sure that nice boys didn't know how to kiss like _that_. 

Nice boys didn't push girls up against a door and kiss them like they'd like to keep them there. Nice boys didn't know what to do with their hands or their tongues. And nice boys certainly didn't kiss other girls when they had fiances that they'd jumped off a yacht for.

So Jemma shoved him away. Hard, so he went reeling backwards and nearly hit his head on the bunk. “What on earth are you doing?” she demanded.

“Kissing you? Well, now of course I'm not kissing you,” he added quickly. “If we're being technical about it.”

“And why would you do something like that?” Jemma said. 

“Because I wanted to?” Fitz offered weakly, shoving both his hands into his pockets, scuffing the tip of one shoe against the floor, and doing a very fine job of looking anywhere but at her. It wasn't exactly the reaction that most men had after they'd kissed her, but then most men were busy recovering from a stinging slap after they'd kissed her. She would have slapped Fitz too, she really would've, if it hadn't been for the fact that he'd need to look nice for the paper's photographer.

“If we all went around doing things just because we wanted to, where would the world be?” Stuck with a lot of dirty dishes, Jemma thought, if the other girls she lived with were anything to judge by. “You can't go around kissing people just because you feel like it. You have a fiance, Fitz, one who you've declared your love for in every medium possible.” Fitz squawked in protest but she just raised her voice and continued on. “Yes, every medium, Fitz. The newspaper, the radio, that high society newsreel unsuspecting moviegoers were subjected to. For all I know, you've hired a pilot to proclaim just how much you love Raina all across the sky.”

“I didn't do it just because I felt like it,” Fitz said defensively. “I did it because you're smart and lovely and you listen to me but you don't let me get away with anything either. And because after you started asking me all those questions about how Raina and I met, I started thinking about it—about how much I really know about Raina, how well she knows me, what we even talked about at all those parties and I...I'm not so sure that Raina's what I want anymore.”

Oh no. No no no. This was not happening. Over her dead body was Jemma Simmons going to let the story of the year get away from her just because the groom had cold feet. And sure, maybe he and Raina weren't headed for a marriage of the till death do us part variety, but everyone said that you could get very efficient divorces in Reno these days. People liked happy endings these days, the kinds where everything got tied up neatly in a bow and the leading couple danced off into the sunset, and writing those kinds of happy endings was exactly what kept her in a job. And this particular happy ending was the one that might just help her get a better job. Jemma had a sinking feeling that if she messed this one up, no matter how much of it wasn't her fault, she'd never get another chance at serious issues. Couldn't even handle a society boy, they'd say in the boardroom, shaking their heads and chuckling indulgently in that way that only men who'd had everything handed to them could, so how could she possibly handle a really tough subject? It wasn't fair, but she'd spent most of her life realizing just how unfair the world could be and trying to shove the scales over a little bit in her favor. So Jemma took a deep breath and steeled her shoulders. No matter how much she was coming to like Leo Fitz, no matter how briefly she'd thought about kissing him back, he was a story first and foremost. A story who changed his mind with every new pretty face he saw, probably, and a story that she could make change his mind right back.

“That's something you need to talk about with her, then,” Jemma said and tried to soften her voice. “You're not going to solve anything by kissing someone else. Look, lots of people have doubts just before they get married. The day before my mother and father got married, my mother tried to climb out her window on a rope made of bedsheets and here I am, so clearly she didn't get very far.”

“It's not just jitters,” Fitz protested. “I know I haven't got the best track record but I can't help thinking that--”

“Are you sure? It'd be a shame to have made all that fuss for nothing. Imagine, you could invite all those private detectives your uncle sent after you to the wedding—it'd make for a nice headline,” Jemma said brightly, cutting him off before he could dig himself an even deeper hole. Whatever Fitz thought he felt, it'd vanish straight away as soon as he got back to his fiance. He'd have a wedding that cost more money than her rent for a year, she'd have a story, and everyone would be better off for it.

“Is everything a headline to you?”

“I'm a reporter, Fitz. What do you think?” Jemma snapped. That was when he stormed out of the compartment and slammed the door behind him. She'd had always the talent of saying the exact right thing to make people angry, after all. Jemma slumped down on the bunk, shut her eyes, and told herself that she'd done the right thing.

 

Three weeks later, Leo Fitz looked down at the preparations for the wedding of the decade and wondered how Jemma would have described it. Then he told himself to stop wondering. 

“You know, mate, it's not too late to back out,” Lance Hunter, one of New York's most noted disreputable divorcees, said from the balcony behind him. “We can call Daisy up, ask her to sweep you away in that airplane of hers. Can't guarantee that she won't crash it, but 's better than marriage.”

“You've been married three times,” Fitz pointed out.

“And divorced three times. Drink?” Hunter extended a half-full whiskey bottle towards him. “Maybe not too much, though. Drink was responsible for my second marriage and third divorce.”

“Raina'll be furious if she catches you with that. It'll ruin all the pictures,” Fitz said. He'd gotten a telegram from someone named Barbara Morse yesterday, informing him that the paper was sending a photographer to take a few pictures of the big day. Jemma wouldn't be coming though, Fitz thought, she'd already gotten all the material she needed. Well, too bad for her. She'd miss all the cake. It's not like he cared one way or the other.

“I have to be in the pictures?” Hunter groaned.

“You're my best man. If I have to be in the pictures, you have to be in the pictures,” Fitz informed him and snatched the whiskey bottle out of Hunter's hand. “Come on, let's get into our tuxes before we get organized too.”

Raina had turned out to be a stunningly efficient wedding planner with the help of his uncle's money, and every time he'd seen her in the last few days, from how she'd run down the steps to greet him the morning he'd come back to her lingering good-night kisses, Fitz couldn't help feeling like he was being managed. Not that that was a bad thing. He needed managing, after all. And if a glazed look sometimes came into Raina's eyes when he talked about the new plans for the business he'd gone over with his uncle, well. He talked too long sometimes anyways.

She'd look beautiful in her wedding dress and she'd glide down the aisle like she'd been born to do it and they'd have a peaceful, lovely marriage that didn't involve a single argument. They'd never argued once, in fact, and Fitz had been quite proud of their perfect record. People weren't meant to argue all the time, like he and Jemma had. It was a good thing she hadn't kissed him back or he might still be stuck on a train somewhere, in a crowded little compartment, unable to get away from her whatever he did. It would have been downright awful, being close enough that he could hear every patently untrue thing that she said.

“Mate?” Hunter said again. “You're sure about the airplane thing? Because if the airplane sounds like too much and you need someone to speak now or forever hold their peace, I've got a lot of practice at that.”

“I'm fine,” Fitz said firmly. “Why wouldn't I be? I'm getting married today.”


	6. I've Got You Under My Skin

Jemma didn't want any kind of reward, no matter how much it would help with her rent or her wardrobe or the stacks of past due bills that had been waiting for her when she got back to her desk. She wanted the $39.60 that she was due for expenses, as any good reporter would. 

“You really don't want the money?” Harold Vincent Andrews, titan of industry, asked and squinted at her like he couldn't be hearing it right.

“Just my expenses,” Jemma said firmly.

“It's a lot of money.”

“I'm well aware of it. And all I want is my expenses. Just make sure not to short me on the sixty cents,” Jemma warned him.

“You traveled all the way from Miami to New York with my nephew and you don't want any kind of compensation? Miss Simmons, are you...I mean, would you happen to be...are you an honest journalist?” Harold Andrews whispered.  
“Only on my off days.” She shrugged and pushed her expenses form back across the table. “But honestly, Mr. Andrews, I got a great story out of it and that's all I ever wanted.”

“And was it easy, getting this great story? Fitz has never liked talking to reporters. Hid behind a potted plant one evening to avoid one, if I remember right.” Andrews chuckled and dipped another piece of toast in egg, biting off the end with a happy crunch. He seemed to find the whole thing, from Fitz's escape in Miami to the lavish wedding due to take place on his front lawn in exactly two hours, much more amusing than anyone else did. 

“Of course it wasn't easy,” Jemma said and resisted the urge to roll her eyes at one of the most powerful men in America. “It wouldn't have taken a reporter as good as me to write it if it were an easy story. No offense meant, sir, but your nephew is one of the most impossible men I've ever met. He's stubborn as a mule, he couldn't be polite if he tried, and he expects everything to be handed to him on a silver platter.”

“In fact,” Jemma continued, warming to her subject now. “He managed to antagonize an entire bus full of people. That takes true talent. He can't see past his own nose when it comes to pretty girls, he thinks that grand gestures fix everything, and quite frankly, I don't see how you've managed to live under the same roof as him for so long and not go insane.”

“And you fell for him anyway. Didn't you, Miss Simmons?”

“Anyone that fell for your nephew ought to have his head examined!” Jemma said indignantly.

“Maybe. But did you, Miss Simmons?”

“I might have.” Jemma glared at him fiercely. “But then I'm a little screwy myself.”

And with that, she stormed out. Without her $39.60 but with the last shreds of her dignity.

 

“Less than thirty minutes left to make your escape, just so you know,” Hunter said, tugging fiercely on the bow tie they'd finally managed to wrestle him into. In less than ten minutes, he'd already managed to rumple himself. 

“Not doing it,” Fitz said and wished the world would stop swaying around him. He hadn't drunk that much whiskey, had he? No, he'd just missed breakfast this morning in all the wedding frenzy. “But your best man duties wouldn't extend to getting me some bacon, would they?”

“No way. You think better when you're hungry,” Hunter said woozily and grabbed hold of a shrub to stay upright.

“I'm telling Mack about this,” Fitz threatened. “Or Daisy. Or both of them.” Hunter just made an indistinct grumbling noise. “See, this is why I'm marrying Raina. She would let me have the bacon.” Of course, she would probably then do something clever that made him forget he ever wanted bacon, but Fitz wasn't going to mention that to Hunter.

“But what you need is someone who won't let you have the bacon,” a voice boomed from behind them. Fitz turned around to see his uncle looming over him. “That reporter came to the house today, you know.”

“Probably wanted her reward,” Fitz said sulkily. Jemma was the type who'd take the money right along with the story. Probably spend it on boring things too, like pencils and those tiny notebooks she'd carried around with her everywhere. 

“All she wanted was her expenses—she refused the reward every time I tried to offer it to her. I like this one, Fitz,” his uncle said smugly. “Much more than the other one.” Of course he did. His uncle would love someone as irritatingly sensible as Jemma Simmons, reporter extraordinaire. Fitz had only read the story she'd written about him after Raina had set it down in the middle of his breakfast, but when he came to the end of it, he'd been forced to admit that she was awfully good at what she did. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought that they'd gotten along perfectly for that entire train ride. 

“Well, it doesn't matter whether or not you like her,” Fitz snapped. “She doesn't like me and she made that perfectly clear.”

“Mate, he just said that she didn't take the reward! That's a good sign, isn't it?” Hunter said. 

“You're supposed to be on my side,” Fitz grumbled. “I've been complaining about Jemma for the past month and now you want me to, what, be a runaway groom? I don't think there's even such a thing as a runaway groom.”

“I've had to hear about this dame for an entire month, now you get a sign that she might feel the same, and you're still going through with the wedding? Mack and Daisy and I didn't listen to you go on and on about her for nothing.” Hunter gave him a little shove in the direction of the driveway. 

“Jemma wouldn't like the grand gesture,” Fitz said, almost automatically. She'd recognize it for what it was, of course, but when it came right down to the heart of things, she was the kind of person who would want the little details. She'd want someone who knew how she took her tea and what kind of jokes would make her laugh and what conversational topics to avoid at all costs. Someone who, even if they didn't know all of it at first, would take the time to learn it.

“She also wouldn't like it if you got married to someone else. Look,” Hunter said when Fitz stayed silent. “Marry Raina today if you want to. But just think how you'd feel about it tomorrow.”

Fitz opened his mouth to protest but Hunter shushed him so fiercely that he actually thought about it. And when he did, really imagined what tomorrow and the next day and the day after that would be like with Raina...well, they'd run out of things to say to each other pretty quickly, wouldn't they? He'd go to the lab, she'd go shopping, they'd go out to an endless round of parties and events, she'd look lovely on his arm and he'd do his best to look happy. And he could be, Fitz told himself. He could manage to be happy, at least, if he really worked at it. Just maybe not as happy as he'd be with Jemma.

“That's...that might actually be a piece of good advice.” Fitz said slowly. 

“Daisy told me to say it,” Hunter admitted.

“Good. She can't possibly object when we borrow the plane then.”

Jemma was working on a very interesting story about corruption in the meatpacking industry when Leo Fitz burst in through the door of the newsroom, marched over to her desk, planted both hands on it, and sent all her papers flying. And of course he'd do something like that in a roomful of reporters. Jemma could already see the new society columnist frantically scribbling down notes in the corner: she'd have to figure out how to bribe her to not run the item later.

“You're supposed to be getting married today,” Jemma finally said. He was still just staring at her, blue eyes wide and drinking her in like he had to memorize her all over again, and they couldn't stare at each other in silence forever. Just for practical purposes.

“Right. Well, I'm not.” 

“Oh, really?” Jemma arched one eyebrow at him. “What is the poor photographer we sent all the way out to Long Island supposed to do? Not to mention the three hundred and seventy five guests?”

“Well, they've still got the cake, so they'll be fine.” Fitz shot her a small conspiratorial smile and Jemma felt a host of traitorous butterflies begin to breed in her stomach. “I, ah, I'm still not sure about a lot of things but I realized that maybe marrying Raina wasn't exactly what I wanted. I don't always look before I leap, you know—sometimes off a yacht—and I thought that maybe I should do a bit more of that.”

“And what are you looking for this time?” Jemma asked.

“You,” he blurted out. “I think. I hope. Not that I mean to sound possessive, I just...I haven't been able to stop thinking about you ever since we met and the more I think about you, the more I'd... I'd like to take you out dancing in the not-too-distant future. Just a few hours—you can leave right away if I step on your toes too much, I promise.”

“Do you even know how to dance?”

“I thought maybe you could teach me,” he said hopefully. “I don't always get things right the first time but I'm willing to learn.”

Jemma bit her lip and considered. Because yes, Fitz made her mad like no one else did but he also made her mind and her pulse race like no one else did. Because he'd let his head be turned by a pretty pair of eyes with nothing behind them, but he'd managed to turn it back just in time. Because he did things without thinking about them, but she was always thinking before she did anything. Because it was just one evening and it was as good a place as any to start. 

“All right, then,” Jemma finally said. “Saturday night, at the Stork Club. Don't be late.”

So he was a full thirty minutes early on Saturday night, a bunch of flowers in hand, and as he watched her smile down at him from the top of her stairs, Leo Fitz thought that he wouldn't want to be in anyone's shoes beside his own.


End file.
